patch

patch

2. a district for which particular officials, such as social workers or policemen, have responsibility

3.Pathol any discoloured area on the skin, mucous membranes, etc., usually being one sign of a specific disorder

4.Med

a. a protective covering for an injured eye

b. any protective dressing

5.Computing a small set of instructions to correct or improve a computer program

patch

[pach]

(computer science)

To modify a program or routine by inserting a machine language correction in an object deck, or by inserting it directly into the computer through the console.

The section of coding inserted in this way.

(electricity)

A temporary connection between jacks or other terminations on a patch board.

patch

1. In stone masonry, a compound used to fill natural voids or to replace chips and broken corners or edges in fabricated pieces of cut stone; applied in plastic form; mixed or selected to match the color and texture of the stone.

2. In carpentry and joinery, a piece of wood or veneer glued into a recess to replace defective portions or voids; an insert or plug.

Patch

patch

(software)

1. A temporary addition to a piece of code, usually
as a quick-and-dirty remedy to an existing bug or
misfeature. A patch may or may not work, and may or may not
eventually be incorporated permanently into the program.
Distinguished from a diff or mod by the fact that a patch
is generated by more primitive means than the rest of the
program; the classical examples are instructions modified by
using the front panel switches, and changes made directly to
the binary executable of a program originally written in an
HLL. Compare one-line fix.

4. A set of modifications to binaries to be applied by a
patching program. IBM systems often receive updates to the
operating system in the form of absolute hexadecimal
patches. If you have modified your OS, you have to
disassemble these back to the source code. The patches
might later be corrected by other patches on top of them
(patches were said to "grow scar tissue"). The result was
often a convoluted patch space and headaches galore.

There is a classic story of a tiger team penetrating a
secure military computer that illustrates the danger inherent
in binary patches (or, indeed, any patches that you can't - or
don't - inspect and examine before installing). They couldn't
find any trap doors or any way to penetrate security of
IBM's OS, so they made a site visit to an IBM office
(remember, these were official military types who were
purportedly on official business), swiped some IBM stationery,
and created a fake patch. The patch was actually the trapdoor
they needed. The patch was distributed at about the right
time for an IBM patch, had official stationery and all
accompanying documentation, and was dutifully installed. The
installation manager very shortly thereafter learned something
about proper procedures.

5. Larry Wall's "patch" utility program, which
automatically applies a patch to a set of source code or
other text files. Patch accepts input in any of the four
forms output by the Unixdiff utility. When the files
being patched are not identical to those on which the diffs
were based, patch uses heuristics to determine how to
proceed.

Diff and patch are the standard way of producing and applying
updates under Unix. Both have been ported to other
operating systems.

Patch Home.

patch

A modification (noun) of software or to modify (verb) software. In the past, a patch used to mean changing actual executable, machine instructions, but today more often than not, it means replacing an executable module in its entirety such as an .EXE or .DLL file. A profusion of patches to an application implies that its logic was poorly designed in the first place.

Although the term typically refers to fixing a problem, a patch may also refer to a general enhancement because the two scenarios have become blurred. For example, a security "enhancement" is often a fix for a vulnerability in the program. In addition, software vendors like to announce something new in an update other than just fixing problems. Therefore, applying patches often refers to both fixes and new features. See patch management and spaghetti code. See also MIDI patch.

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